Part of me only comes to life at night

They don't want people to understand that "the problem" they have is that the jeans aren't made for them. Manufacturers prefer for them to continue buying jeans they don't like and feeling like their body is the problem.

The thing is the shinigami as a whole are hinted as being in the wrong from the beginning. But especially on the scale explored in CFYOW in the Fake Karakura arc and TYBW.

Their entire society is only possible because they’ve foisted a god in amber and fossilized his powers to suit them. One world to three, all to suit the shinigami’s mode of life and purification.

The soul society arc in the manga does the best job at integrating the injustices of the Seireitei into the story and into the purview of the main cast. However, it’s dropped going forward and never truly picked back up until it’s too late.

It was such a wonderful line of thought and theme that falls flat in the manga proper when Kubo tries to champion Ichigo as this great force of change, when largely there is no substantial change to shinigami society aside from the wars.

Ichibei in particular has already been built up to be about preservation of the current status quo over everything since TYBW, so it’s a natural progression. He’s willing to test Ichigo for viability of a Soul King replacement. He’s willing to let Aizen wreak destruction for years to keep his advantage against the Quincy.

So I get the sense that giving Ichibe the title of "Osho" is probably meant to evoke those cult leader vibes that pockmark the real life Osho's legacy. Ichibe's steeped in Buddhist imagery, from his prayer beads and ascetic-looking geta sandals to the way his big, bushy eyebrows and round, intense little eyes evoke the way Bodhidharma is usually depicted, like on daruma dolls. There's more than a little bit of Shinto in there, too. Shinto priests tend to be caretakers and officiants at locations where a relic associated with a kami is said to be enshrined, which can often take the form of literal or metaphorical parts of the kami's body. Ichibe is effectively the high priest and temple grandmaster of the Gotei 13, leading prayers to the enshrined corpse of the Soul King and claiming to act on his will.

Though it's pretty clear that's not the case. Ichibei is only supposed to be acting on the Soul King's will, but the truth is that he uses the incredible power that comes with that proximity to the Soul King for his benefit. He's the real man behind the curtain for Soul Society, reaching far, far beyond what his purview is supposed to be.

In terms of his religious aesthetic, it's also deeply corrupt. He dresses in ways that are evocative of an ascetic Buddhist monk, yet he's ostentatious and the motif of drinking sake features heavily in his grand final attack. While sake is used for purification into Shinto, including drinking some of it, the way Ichibe references drinking snacks in his incantation makes it clear that this is an act of religious purification that's being used to cloak an act of personal pleasure. In the illustration Kubo drew of him to commemorate his focus episode back in season 2 or 3 of TYBW, he's also seen wearing a jacket with enso all over it - the calligraphic painted circle that's a prominent symbol of Zen Buddhism - while holding a shot glass. Religion and spiritual authority are blended so deeply with vernacular aesthetics and personal pleasure in Osho that it's impossible to separate them.

I think ostensibly, the Zero Division are meant to be equals in rank rather than the traditional hierarchy of a Gotei 13 squad with a Captain as their leader. All the Zero Division palaces are level with each other encircling the Soul King's tomb, and none are higher than the other, plus they all wear variations on the same uniform.

But I mean... the others call him "Osho." A title for a religious master. The vibe is that they're supposed to all be equals, but they treat Ichibe as being their real leader. You can see a parallel between their cultish devotion to Ichibe and the Messianic role Yhwach plays for the Sternritter as well.

Weeping monster pots

My issue is that I can’t figure out a good equivalent to that kind of practice with writing ? Like idk. Do I do a bunch of object descriptions ? Do I do a scene with a restricted vocab ?? I don’t knowwwww

Grinding would be word sprints. NaNoWriMo was killer for this before their whole operation went to shit, but the good thing about that is that they never had copyright over the concept of writing fast. The numbers you go for can be a little arbitrary at first as you figure out what specifically works for you, but 15 minutes is usually the average from what I've seen? Maybe you can get 500 words in 15 minutes. Maybe you can only get 200. Either way, you're exercising the muscles that get ideas from your brain out onto paper.

Here's some other ideas I came up with for more specific exercises:

Wordsketching for Settings

Go outside (or stay inside?), practically anywhere. Sit down and angle yourself in a way that lets you get a good view of where you're at, and then pick the first things that jump out to you about the place you're in and describe them in 2-3 sentences. Then, figure out what you're drawn to next and write sentences about that. Make sure you add what you feel in that moment (Is the atmosphere uncomfortable? Is the place hot or cold? Humid?), what the place sounds like (People talking, or cars, or animal noises...), so on and so forth. This is very similar to the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique, so you can even work off of that structure if you'd like, but this is specifically to help you get better at describing settings.

As far as fanfic is concerned, I think the genre as a whole skimps on atmosphere and setting a SHIT TON. If you want to elevate yourself, let the pacing of your work slow down for a second and dedicate some time to really orienting your blorbos in a specific space. It does a lot for the tone of the work, and... if you want to play ball with the big boys you need to start thinking about things like tone and atmosphere when writing.

Transcription for Dialogue

This can entail you writing down what your family says at the dinner table like a creepy weirdo, or transcribing movie dialogue or anything of that nature. The purpose would be to get used to how conversation naturally flows between two or more people (turn-taking, interruption etc.), and furthermore getting a sense of how human beings naturally talk to each other. I've written down things I've heard people say in public before for no better reason than thinking "Oh! I could totally see [X Character] saying that!". Whatever hangups you may have over this sick linguivouyeristic perversion are much less important than the tragedy of filling your work with Incorrect Quotes -style unreadable garbage. It's like eating your vegetables.

Wiktionary Challenges for Word Choice

Just spamming the "random word" button on Wiktionary will give you instances in every language Wiktionary has in its database, so this one requires a little more work to be helpful, but in lieu of that you can look through stuff like Categories or Thesaurus Entries!

Let's gather a few fun words to demonstrate.

Okay, this should be more than enough for some sentences describing a setting out in nature! Blunket is making me think this takes place at twilight... And I like alliterating, so let's mash it to make the semi-redundant phrase "blunket-blue" just for some flair.

The copse laid still. On the bank of the meandering creek, the rabbit flattened herself out against the soft grass, her luculent eyes darting back and forth over her surroundings. What she could see of the copse looked mostly the same: Twisting shrubs the color of ash, blunket-blue grasses, an invisible wind brushing over all that stillness and pressing flat everything it could. Her nose twitched. Until the last blushes of rose drained from the evening sky, the rabbit would keep herself fixed in that spot on the riverbank and wait.

Unlike with art, there isn't an organized consensus about them and accepted practice excercises. I've consumed a lot of writing theory and advice content in my life, so I'll do my best to try and make a list of possible excercises based on stuff I learned as well as my own judgement for useful skills.

The most important thing to remember is that writing is the art of communicating your intent. A lot of writing is just figuring out ways to get across the experience you want to create, and so a lot of the excercises are about learning to do that in different ways.

Descriptions

Start out with picking random things and describing them in writing. This is mostly to get used to translating sensory experiences into verbal descriptions. Try describing experiences or things that aren't visual too.

Pick an object. Describe it three different times. Each time you're not allowed to use any of the previous descriptions.

Pick an object. Describe it three different times. Each time create a different connotation for it (an easy trio to start with is good/bad/neutral).

Go people watching. Pick something that's happening in front of you and describe it three different ways. Each time in a different genre.

Play taboo. Describe an object, action or an emotion without naming it or using closely associated words.

Exposition

Play storytelling Mao. Write a scene where the world and characters act according to a weird and arbitrary rule but never explain it directly or indirectly. Try to communicate the rule with only the character's actions, dialogue and environmental storytelling.

Write a scene with conflict and a twist, then analyze it to figure out what information the audience must know in order to to understand what's going on. Rewrite the scene as a mystery, each time omitting one of those pieces of information and framing it as the answer to the scene. This is mostly to practice awareness of what information you're giving the audience and how its presence or lack of it changes things.

Write a scene with an unreliable narrator. The narrator's perception of what's happening is completely mistaken, but the audience must still be able to understand the truth of what's actually going on.

Atmosphere

Write a story with a beginning, middle and end without any dialogue or actions. Use only descriptions to create environmental storytelling.

Pick an object. Describe it three different times. Each time try to evoke a different emotion.

Dialogue

Write a scene with only dialogue.

Write a conversation where the characters never state what they actually mean.

Pick an emotion. Write as many one line dialogues as you can that convey the character is feeling that emotion.

Character voice

Write a scene with multiple people using only dialogue. You can't state any of the characters' names, yet each speaker should be distinct.

Write a piece of exposition for a character to deliver and have a few different characters say it. Analyze how the character's backstory, culture, status, worldview and personality would change the delivery. What parts would they emphasize and what would get downplayed? How would they frame the information? What's their opinion on it? Would they deliver it factually or insert their opinion? How would their mood change the way they deliver the exposition?

Prose

Write poetry (and look up excercises for those as unfortunately I'm not familiar enough to give any).

Write a 1k story. Then rewrite it to be less than 500 words while still telling the same story.

Write a two sentence story. Write a three sentence story. Write a five sentence story. Compare them and analyze the things the extra length allowed you to do.

Pacing

Look up story structures. Pick a story and try to map it to said story structures. (A good place to start is Snyder's save the cat structure and hollywood movies. Most of them use that structure as template).

Write a story using only sentences with 3-4 words. Then do it with 6-7 words, and then with 10-11 words. Read those stories aloud and analyze the differences between how they sound and feel.

Plotting

Go people watching. Pick something that's happening in front of you and describe it in three different ways. Each time add a different twist in the end. What different setup did each twist need?

Write the same story in five sentences, then in three, then in two. What had to remain in order for the story to be the same? What was lost? In what ways did it change the resulting story?

Pick a story and read/watch it all the way through. Then go back and analyze each scene seperately. In what way did the scene contribute to the story?

Use a random word generator. Pick one word for theme, two words for plot and three words for characters. Figure out a way to write a coherent story that includes all of them. This one can be changed with any number of words for any category. The important thing is that there would be enough words you need to use that it acts as a constraint rather than a freeform prompt

Write a scene. Then rewrite it so that it starts as late as you can make it and ends as early as it can.

Character

Look up character arc structures. Pick a story and try to map it to a fitting character arc.

Practice debate. Pick a topic and write as many different viewpoints on it as you can. Try to give each viewpoint strong arguments to support it.

Pick a character. Figure out what plot would challenge them the most and what antagonist would cause them the most trouble.

Pick a character and decide on one trait of theirs. Write a foil character to highlight said trait.

Metaphor and subtext

Pick a couple of characters and have them argue. The argument can't be stated directly in any way and instead must be communicated through metaphor.

But that's the thing. She doesn't exaggerate or grotesqueify or alter people's bodies to fit some standard. (Except insofar as she draws different species differently, and those are exquisitely practiced to ensure they have the same diversity of appearances that humans do.) She just presents people exactly as they are, complexities and oddities and all.